On an interesting day’s running in the third official test at Barcelona, Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull again came out on top and main rival Fernando Alonso was forced to admit that the world champion team look like they will start the season with an advantage.

Vettel did a series of short runs culminating in a lap of 1m23.315s, which is 2.7s slower than the pace set in similar circumstances last February on day two of the Barcelona test – a combination of downforce lost from the double diffuser and the relative pace of Pirelli tyres compared to Bridgestones.

Looking good (Photo: Red Bull)

Red Bull had a reliable as well as a fast day today, covering 104 laps with only small delays.

Once again the Toro Rosso showed some good pace, illustrating that although they are building their own car for the second year, the Red Bull sister team has been able to raise its technical level from last season. The runs were short, but so were Red Bull’s.

Ferrari lost some time today, for once, with electrical and other problems. But they still managed to cover 90 laps. New technical second in command Pat Fry said today that he’s delighted with the way the new Ferrari has been running and with how gentle it is on its tyres, but added that it’s harder to judge than last year where each team is in performance terms because not only of the fuel weight range but also the KERS and adjustable rear wing deployment. “The lap time can vary by seven tenths to a whole second depending on whether you use it all or not.”

He reiterated that success this season will be as much about making the fewest mistakes as it will be about sheer performance. He also talked up Barcelona as an ideal test venue for showing up the positives and negatives in a car, mentioning cheekily that it was there in 2009 when his former team McLaren realised that they had a serious problem with their car…

Alonso is in expectation management mode and said that the Red Bull has the performance edge, “We all know that Red Bull should be ahead of everybody, so we expect Red Bull to be very competitive. But it will be two or three races before we can say for sure. There is a lot to come from Ferrari as well.”

This is not surprising given were they were last season and where their 2009 car was relative to the rest before everyone was forced to adapt their cars to run double diffusers, which have now been banned. But as Williams’ Sam Michael told us last week, all the new rules for this year will also mean that the development rate will be higher than usual as the best teams extract the maximum from the new components. He believes we will see over a second of lap time gain during the season, so there is plenty to play for among the top teams. Red Bull, however, showed last year that their production facilities are able to keep pace with to anything Ferrari and McLaren come up with in development terms.

While Ferrari continues to put miles on its car, McLaren has been having some issues with its new car, which was launched a week later than its rivals and therefore missed the Valencia test. Jenson Button did only 54 laps today and spent much of the morning not running as the car had hydraulic issues and he admits that the team is a little behind at this stage, “We’re not doing as many laps as we’d like, so we’re a little behind some of the other teams, which is a bit of a disadvantage, but that’s something we’re addressing,” he said. “Over the next two days, hopefully our reliability will be better, and we’ll be fully equipped with spare parts.”

McLaren will be most anxious to secure a fourth official test to replace the Bahrain test in early March. It must now be considered most unlikely that either the test or the race in Bahrain will take place. A fifth test in mid March is a possibility in the event that the first race is cancelled.

Renault gave both its drivers time in the car today. Petrov had a troubled Friday losing time with issues on the KERS system. Mercedes continue their uncertain form, the day after Michael Schumacher said he felt they might win races this season but that the championship looked a tall order. Rosberg did a 1m 24.7s lap on a short run.

Tonio Liuzzi took the wheel of the 2010 HRT car for the first time today. The Italian covered 70 laps in total as he auditions for the final seat on the F1 grid.

RBR being out in front comes as little surprise, because they have had nigh on 2 years of a shake down with concepts the others have to put a reliability tick against. Ferrari are carrying on where they left off and McLaren need something major to avoid this being a development catch up all over again.

I’ll predict one of the top teams will have something novel to gain grid position from the new requirement of fixed axle weights in qualy. As Newey has been the master in the past, it would not surprise me to me to see him there again. Ferrari did such a good job last year, it could even be them. Previously you would not look much further than McLaren, but they seem to be having trouble spotting the wood for the trees.

Ferrari will start out better now that Alonso has been with them a year. It is also a point in their favor that they’ve hired some former Red Bull people as well.

I don’t want to start a ‘Mclaren is in trouble’ meme, but sometimes F-1 is like war, you make all your plans and you consider all the options and when the first shot is fired it all goes out the window. They had a good strategy but the teething problems with the MP4-26 have held them back. We shall see. If anyone can pull it out its Mclaren.

It seems to be getting more and more worrisome for Mclaren. Neither Button or Hamilton participated in the post season tire tests, and now they’re losing more time on the tires due to technical issues. This is the time to be working on strategy, hope they get it all sorted out. Poor weather for testing, and a cancelled race could really set them behind.

Redbull is The fastest for sure. Ferrari looks promising & reliable but they’ll find it hard to match RedBull especially That neat bodywork round The gearbox : they should’ve opts for pullrod maybe. McLaren is different which means slow and unreliable. McLaren doesn’t care though : as long as The car makes headlines it’s ok & of course they are confident.

James, today a lot of happened in terms of race simulation. Both Mercedes and Red Bull did 66-lap race sim, and Red Bull seemed to be at least 1 second faster per lap compared to Mercedes. How would you read on that?

I wouldn’t be too worried about McLaren – compare the opening two stints done by Jenson and Vettel today. It is likely they were both doing race sims and Jenson was faster and kept his soft tyres going for longer.

Nobody at the front has shown there ultimate pace, this year it´s even more difficult to understand the situation because of the tyres and the new gizmos.
For me at the moment it´s Red Bull fastest than Ferrari second and than 3 teams Mercedes, Reanult and Mclaren.
I don´t believe that Vettel´s fastest time was on a very low fuel load, i don´t think Red Bull is doing something different from last year and at Bahrein last year was the first time they run with low fuel.
Ferrari looks fast, relieble and gentle on tyres like last year, they might have a chance specially at races.
As for the others, very difficult to know, so many reliebility issues that it doesn´t look good.

It seems like another RBR and Ferrari battle with McLaren hopefully falling back and allowing another team like Renault to move forward. Should be an interesting start to the season with the likely cancellation of Bahrain and the new regulations.

I definitely would not rule out McLaren just yet. I will tell you an example of a similar situation that happened before I was born.

In 1987, McLaren finished 2nd in the Constructors Championship with Prost and Johansson finishing 4th and 6th respectively, way behind Williams in terms of raw speed. For the 1988 season, they got rid of Johansson and replaced him with Senna. For the 1988 car, McLaren decided to go down the revolution path, rather than the evolution path. They produced a car for the 1988 season, which according to Neil Oatley, who was Alain Prost’s race engineer throughout 1987 and 1988, “a strikingly different car from its predecessor”. This car only had one day of testing. It was a huge step up compared to its predecessor and was comfortably faster than everyone else. The rest is history, as we all know. The situation for 2011 is similar to the 1988 situation. Time will tell.

Hmm i would not count Mclaren out either but note that in 1988, Prost n Senna were the class of the field…at a time when driving skill mattered more. Hamilton and Button aren’t really in the same league and are certainly not the class of this year’s field per se.

Hi James. Is it possible that McLaren are wasting too much effort trying to find this year’s must have holy grail of must have tricks such as previous years double diffuser or f-duct rather than concentrating on good old fashioned engineering?
I hope they are sandbagging, but I suspect not.

McLaren have deliberately gone a different route to all the other teams. They have increased the length of the wheel base to gain superior rear aerodynamics. This looks a nailed on gain, but as we saw when Schumacher and Ferrari did this in the 90′s, that LWB gave other problems that took a long time to fix, especially in the slow speed corners. One of the biggest issues this season will be getting the tyres to work over an extended period. I just cannot see a LWB helping in that regard, more damaging.

At the moment RBR look to be have superior aero without the drawback the LWB can bring. If I had to guess, it would be that McLaren are in worst shape than last year. I have always viewed McLaren as the epitome of F1 engineering design and development, but that seems to have disappeared over recent years. With the noticeable exception of the f-duct, they really have been poor out of the blocks, consistently having to play catch up.

I also feel that it will be RBR versus Ferrari with Red Bull having the qualifying pace while Ferrari might have the edge in the races. The McLaren might win a few races but i don’t think it will win any championships. Well only time will tell

Enjoyed watching at the circuit Fri pm and Saturday. On doing the circuit bus-tour, I noticed the amount of rubber left on the circuit off the main racing line – really large chunks in places; do you know if this is worse than previous years, and if so, does it mean there will be less likelihood of drivers going off-line during potential overtaking moves?

Also noticed the (Lotus) Renault (GP) sounded awful under braking? Any idea what that is all about?

It is worse than in Bridgestone years, the tyres are chunking but Pirelli say that won’t happen as much once we get to venues where the track temp is well above 20 degrees. They say tyres will perform much better generally in hotter conditions